Community Review: State of Decay 2

Last week we tackled your thoughts on Detroit: Become Human, so it only makes sense this week to ask how you all survived the latest zombie apocalypse.

With State of Decay 2 having had a mammoth 20GB patch recently and a little time for everyone to become accustomed to the new mechanics, I'd love to know your thoughts on Undead's latest zombie sim. First, our coverage so far:

Stacie's experience mirrors a lot of my own. Finding cars was intensely difficult. Getting overwhelmed seemed a lot easier than the original. The nights are dark, exceedingly so. Taking out a plague heart without a quick means of escape ... can be fatal.

What bugged me a little about the experience was the forced nature of the character quests. You switch survivors, and you'll be given their plot line to explore. Along the way, you inevitably hear other survivors or someone holler in something on the radio.

Do that, and you'll undoubtedly run out of energy to complete the original quest line you were on. Switching characters will abandons the quest, but you might have no other choice because everyone is still pretty fresh and their stamina hasn't levelled up.

That was an unnecessary frustration I never quite enjoyed. Beyond that, however, and it's largely the same State of Decay vibe - just a little more elaborate, with the hoops to getting home base up and running slightly more involved, and zombies that are a little tougher to tackle.

But what about yourselves? How have you found the State of Decay sequel so far?

So many cool haters. Its actually quite good.Feels more inhabited and less empty in that open world kinda way. Much better than the first one. Some of the game mechanics are a lot better. Its worth the price. Id give it a proper 7 and a half. If you like the idea of running your own post zombie apocalypse base give it a try. They say that xbox doesnt have any good ip. This one is not bad, its a base simulator. Those people that are trying it on their free game pass are not exactly going to be invested enough to give it a fair go. Fun,nteresting,different.

To the above commenter complaining about not knowing what they're "supposed to be doing"...the answer is "it's up to you". It's a survival sandbox – it's not a narrative experience and if you went in expecting a story you're going to be disappointed.

Think of it more of a single player survival game but with strategy/base building/community/co-op elements. The objective is basically just to last as long as you can in the world without your community dying out. The game has perma-death for all of your characters too which forces you to make every action you take strategic.

I think this game and the first entry are both masterpieces of game design. They are rough around the edges in terms of visuals and performance and the open-ended format isn't for everyone. Once it sucks you in though it's pretty great.

I wish the devs had improved the visuals and art design to be either more realistic or stylised though – visually the game is quite bland. Better performance is also something i would've liked, as the frame rate can be rough. Combat could also be a bit deeper but it serves it's purpose well enough.

It seems about as buggy as the first one started out, and while I had some visual bugging (flashing HUD at times, that thin white line along the horizon occassionally appearing when driving at night) and some NPC pathfinding being a bit screwy at times - I didnt experience anything gamebreaking. Haven't played since the 20gb patch over the weekend, but hopefully it's been tidied up.

About 4 days into my first campaign, I found myself about 5kms away from base, completing a character mission, after wasting most of my stamina fetching stuff (I can get a bit obsessive) , but not wanting to waste the mission , drove off to see it through. Long story short, I ended up with a car loaded with resources, but hacked to pieces, (burning front bumper), %10 health, %10 stamina, with 25 minutes until plague fever took over. Then I ran out of petrol. So I get out of the car, get jumped by zombies, pull out my gun (I normally melee, but stamina, health and time were critical), and somehow manage to shoot my car (hey, there were three zombies between me and the car, moving) and boom, it's toast, with my resources packs in the boot. OK, long story shortened again - desperation, finding a repair kit, finding petrol - I made it home, with less than a minute to spare before my plague fever took over. Damn it was some of the most intensely stressful , single player minutes I've experienced in years, fighting against multiple systems, while trying to keep up the grinding of supplies to keep the base ticking over and stop my community going insane.

And that character I saved from certain doom? He died pretty unspectacularly a couple of days later on a relatively routine nighttime warehouse looting raid.

When I played the first State Of Decay, I enjoyed it, enjoyed the systems, enjoyed the almost DR1 Otis way it would keep throwing near impossible sidequests at you while you while you'd half completed another task - its 2002 quality level animation - and thought, "surely there'll be a AAA , smooth, slightly more forgiving Ubi/Acti/EA version of this wonderful grand theft zombie/sims hybrid (or even the money printing perfect The Walking Dead game that could be built from its bones) - but Five Years later, we've just got State Of Decay 2.

It's far from perfect, and once again , like SOD, I wonder what a dev team with triple the budget and triple the staff could turn out - but I've got more Grand Theft Zombie/Sims, and it scratches that itch. There's not really another game that offers me that.

That's either a shame, or the best endorsement I could give it.
8.5/10 if you liked SOD.
7/10 otherwise.

I didn't really get into it wholesale until after the recent 20gb patch, which apparently fixed a heap of issues.

I had similar issues to most I've spoken to - for me the community/base mechanics weren't explained very well. It took me several hours to figure out why my community was low on ammo and building materials, despite my storage being full of bullets and whatnot. Turns out that the rucksacks of materials you pick up need to be deposited for base supplies - the others are just items for individual characters.

The inventory system is interesting as well, the rucksack thing makes it a little more ungainly.

But once I figured it out, I literally can't stop playing. You really need to just get over the initial hump and figure out what's going on, and get the first couple of decent upgrades to your community. If you don't have the time or the interest it might not be much incentive, but I love it now. I think I stuck with it because I was frustrated and just wanted to understand it on principle.

I didn't really get into it wholesale until after the recent 20gb patch, which apparently fixed a heap of issues.

I had similar issues to most I've spoken to - for me the community/base mechanics weren't explained very well. It took me several hours to figure out why my community was low on ammo and building materials, despite my storage being full of bullets and whatnot. Turns out that the rucksacks of materials you pick up need to be deposited for base supplies - the others are just items for individual characters.

The inventory system is interesting as well, the rucksack thing makes it a little more ungainly.

But once I figured it out, I literally can't stop playing. You really need to just get over the initial hump and figure out what's going on, and get the first couple of decent upgrades to your community. If you don't have the time or the interest it might not be much incentive, but I love it now. I think I stuck with it because I was frustrated and just wanted to understand it on principle.

Triple AAA games nailing the brief. Indie games surprising people out of nowhere, and expansions and patches that completely turn a game around. It's been a good year for games - now it's time for you to vote for your favourite.